Category Archives: Special Features

A Greek Feast with Costa of Costa’s Garden Odyssey

Costa basting his whole lamb on a spit

Being invited to someone’s house for a meal is one of life’s greatest pleasures and privileges. So when I was invited to a lunch at Costa Georgiadis’s house on a beautiful Bondi day with blue sky and a cool breeze I knew I was in for a wonderful treat. George is a Greek Gardening God and as he is Greek, for lunch he and his father cooked up a lamb on a spit for us. George energetically zips around the place with his prolific beard flying about. His father Stan is a lovely man who proclaims himself “deaf as an owl” and has “never had a beard-I told him that they’d need to shear him like a sheep to get rid of it” and who got up at 5.15am to start the lamb even after Costa told him not to and rest. Stan was born in 1930 and has been cooking this dish since 1960. The lamb itself is basted in a “secret” marinade which is not so closely guarded a secret anymore. For the whole lamb they used almost 2 litres of marinade basting the lamb with it and the marinade is a mix of olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper and garlic. And another secret weapon? Stan’s device – a custom made Stainless Steel Syringe to inject garlic cloves into the meat overnight to impress the flavours into the meat.

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43 comments | August 26, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

10 Things You Should Know About Food Bloggers

The species Foodus Bloggerus is a peculiar creature. I know, because I feel distinctly peculiar most times.  We march to the beat of our own drum (or more accurately the sound of food sizzling). When most people are enjoying their food, we’re taking close ups of it. So to understand this misunderstood creature, allow me to reveal 10 things you should know about this unusual creature, should you ever encounter us in the wild.

1. Be prepared to eat early. Like a reverse Vampire, we love the light as more light means better photos. Eating dinner at 4pm? Sure, no problem, the light will be good then. Similarly, you’ll also find us seated near the window more often than not as the light is better there and we only use Flash in extreme circumstances or in closed blogger-friendly company.

2. We’re shy and hate to be stared at, especially while we are taking photos. However if it’s something exciting, we retreat into a haze and snap away uncaring. That’s called the “Paparazzi Brangelina moment”, when we descend into a frenzy of snapping.

3. Most people react to romantic lighting positively. Not the food blogger. We will utter things such as “crap, not this moody, romantic lighting again. What about my photos!”. Because as you know, it’s all about the photos ;)

4. We love to share food. The equation is straightforward: the more food shared, the more food sampled and the more we can write about.

Hmm, how do I get the piece back in without them noticing?

5. If invited somewhere, we’ll usually bring something as it gives us an excuse to make something for our blog. However this is not catch free. A cake might have a slice taken out of it for photographic reasons although it may be put back into place. Try not to stare and pretend the piece wasn’t cut. Please. We feel weird enough as it is.

6. We love to choose where to eat out. Please let us choose – food is our life and we will painstakingly research places. We may also send through copious links and print out menus. It’s a compulsion. Just take them smiling and back away if you need to. Oh and trust us, the place may look weird/seedy but the food will be good.

Food-the ultimate gift

7. If you ever want to give a gift, give food. Something unusual, hard to get or exotic is wonderful. Or something fresh from your garden. We are easy to please. I swear I thought I wanted Choos until I got a roast rib of pork as a gift.

8. Dinner out with us in a restaurant is an experience. It can either go well and can be an interesting experience or it can go badly. Embarrassing sometimes if you aren’t used to the excessive photo taking. But it’s never boring. Badly is when a chef comes out to yell at us for taking photos or something similar. Good is when you get an extra dessert or when the chef comes out to say hello or explain how they’ve made something.

Yes we took pictures of the bread and butter…

9. If you dine with us, you’ll learn the art of patience. Yes we even want to photograph the bread and butter. Food is better a bit colder right? Or so we’d like to convince you.

10. It’s hard once you get into the habit, for us to not take photos of the food that we eat. I’ve only eaten out once and not taken a photo. And it hurt. Similarly, when I was watching an episode of Mad Men the other week, I was so engrossed in watching Peggy having dinner with her date and their drinks arrived and I wondered why she didn’t whip out a camera before drinking it and so my hand reached out to get my camera. Yes, it really did.

Tell me Dear Reader, do you have any other keen observations, either as a food blogger or an observer of one?

152 comments | July 13, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

40 Days and Nights in Paris: A sneak preview of the new Adriano Zumbo collection

Zumbo’s Bedroom Bookshelf

So the story goes, I was in Adriano Zumbo’s bedroom so I took a snap of his bookshelf but more on that later. And what was I doing at his house? Getting a preview of his new collection: 40 Days and Nights in Paris (due out May 23rd) for my birthday! For a food blogger, this is as close to the best birthday gift you could ever get. “You’re the first to see the whole collection” he says “even the guys in the kitchen have only seen two of them” and I suppress an internal squeal.  Oh yes, birthdays are a good thing indeed.

Kitchen bookshelf

Zumbo recently returned from two months in the City of Lights which included attending the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie (World Pastry Cup) and working at Pierre Herme, hence the collection’s name, and he came home eager to get back into his own kitchen and get started on his new collection. Speaking of his kitchen, the minute I walk through the door, I know I’m in the home of a chef. It’s a huge, gorgeously spacious kitchen with a massive island and one of those heavy duty restaurant kitchen faucets. I spy a bookshelf full of cookbooks (including Nigella’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”) and when I ask if I can take a photo of them, he says “Let me show you the real bookshelf”. This is the one he spoke about in his interview with me which is in his bedroom. It’s packed with some amazing cookbooks of the professional calibre from the Libarie Gourmande in Paris.

Zumbo’s home kitchen

As for the cakes, let me present a preview of them without any further ado. As the cakes remain unnamed at this stage, if you’d like to suggest some names for them, please leave a comment as Adriano will be checking this page. Who knows, he might get inspiration from your suggestions! He said that he loved reading the comments from all of you in his interview so get your thinking caps on and name away! :)

Cake #1

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79 comments | May 13, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

Look at what the Postman brought me…

Over the past week or two samples have been arriving of some very yummy goodies. Somehow, unwittingly they all coincided with my birthday which happened to be yesterday so I just took it to mean that they were birthday presents. Do you like my logic?

I just want to say a huge thankyou to my friend Angela from Creating A Stir who sent me a most amazing package all the way from Japan. She knows I have a love for Pocky and Japanese Kit Kats as well as all other things quirky and Japanese so she sent me a mind blowing selection of food including: Kits Kats (in blueberry cheesecake, cherry and strawberry as well as an intriguing little packet of little kit kat balls); Pocky (in kiwifruit, coco banana, double dessert chocolate, and peach milk), adorable cake boxes, delicious sesame crackers, bento art toothpicks (I can definitely see myself getting into bento art); ginger peanuts; a moreish almond and fish snack; mushroom chocolate biscuits; Collon cookies in milky green tea; cupcake wrappers, chewing gum (including a dragonfruit and blood orange flavour! :o ), gorgeous origami paper, pretty chopsticks and  chopstick covers and green tea jelly snacks.

Angela’s card-cute!

The first to get eaten were the Blueberry Cheesecake Kit Kats which are amazing-with an eerily accurate blueberry cheesecake flavour. Next were the rest of it including the Kiwifruit Pocky (fabulous). In fact everything in there was an absolute delight. She has great taste that Angela-thankyou again ;)

I also received some packs from the Lilydale Free range chicken range with Luke Mangan (of Glass restaurant fame). I was given a African Spice Breast Escalopes and Tarragon and Mint Thigh Cutlets. Flipping the packs over I saw that the African Spice Breast Escalopes only had a cooking time of 20 minutes for the entire meal so I saved it for when I was time poor and needed a quick dinner-the ultimate test. Escalopes are part of the breast of the chicken, pounded until thin and therefore quick to cook. I quite like chicken breast but my husband and parents don’t, always saying that it is too dry but I was willing to give this a go. Besides which there were 8 escalopes here so for the two of us there was quite a bit of meat and the calorie count per serve was pleasantly low at 585kj per 2 escalopes (yay!).

I made the requisite tomato salsa (substituting coriander for mint as that was all I had-it’s meant to be easy remember) and couscous and pan fried the escalopes after sprinkling them with the flavour sachet and oil. All up it took me about 30 minutes to cook with all of the chopping and preparation-you might be able to do it in 20 minutes but it would be a furious and fraught 20 minutes and you may lose a finger with the whole chopping part.

I took a bite of the chicken and they were juicy and tender and totally scoffable – I almost thought that it was a juicy thigh fillet. I greedily ate it happy in the knowledge that it was low in calories. For those that don’t like any additives, the dry marinade sachet for the escalopes reads a little like a cup a soup label so just keep that in mind but the other pack is just herbs. You can always buy the escalopes and make your own although the zero marinating time was good for me and I can definitely see myself buying these again. A pack of the escalopes is $11.40 per tray and the thigh fillets are $9 per tray from Coles. We did try the Tarragon and Mint thigh fillets but definitely preferred the African spice escalopes instead.

As for the rest of the escalopes? Apart from having them for dinner tonight, I’ll use these in a salad for lunch or in a sandwich (these are best and juiciest straight off the pan rather than reheated). And share them grudgingly.

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51 comments | May 9, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella

Bill Granger Interview

Bill, Madonna, Cher. Yep Bill – that is Bill Granger – is know by a single moniker. I spoke to Bill on a cold Autumn morning where he had just stepped off a plane from London – something that would resoundingly reduce most of humankind to something akin to zombies. However Bill greets me with a sunny “Hello! It’s Bill Granger!” as if crossing multiple time zones doesn’t affect him at all. He laughs easily and is enthusiastic and chatty, an interviewer’s dream in fact. This is what he had to say.

NQN:  Your father was a butcher and your mother was a vegetarian. That must have made for some interesting dinner table debates!
Bill: (laughs) The strange thing was, we never really used to sit down and have meals the way we were brought up. We’d always eat separately and dad would always come home late and eat separately with mum so food was never a huge part of our family considering that it was our business as dad was a butcher.

NQN: I would have thought the opposite considering you have such a focus on family (and a lovely family at that).
Bill: You know I think that’s why I do it. I think it’s that thing of I didn’t have it enough. Dinner is such an important time to sit and relax and talk about your day. Especially when everyone has such disparate days with school and working, those moments of shared experience are great.

NQN:  Wait til they get to uni!
Bill: I know! I think one’s going to be a vegetarian. I know that’s going to happen just to annoy dad I’m sure (laughs). My wife was vegetarian until she met me and then she turned.

NQN: You’re originally from Melbourne but I always associate you with Sydney.
Bill: Everyone just thinks of me as so quintessentially Sydney but I’m actually from Melbourne. I was brought up down near Mentone then we moved  out to a place called Berwick which is near where Kath & Kim do the series. That was my first job – at Kmart Fountaingate!

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52 comments | May 4, 2009 by Not Quite Nigella